The Weekend Special (June 3)

I was in transit at the beginning of this week – thanks for your patience. Some very good stuff this not-a-weekend.

Pieces are given up to three Munros (for fiction), Sontags (for essays), or Herseys (for your picks). As with restaurant stars, even one Munro, Sontag, or Hersey indicates a generally positive review.

🍳 Fiction

“Woman, Frog, and Devil” by Olga Tokarczuk. Three Munros. pitiful, pinched, pickled. A triumph of a character study; this young, shy, clever outsider flies off the page, never feeling a bit false or affected. Props go to translator Antonia Lloyd-Jones, whose rendering of Tokarczuk’s writing is so plainly gorgeous I must quote an entire paragraph-long sentence of it: “At the gymnasium, Mieczyś was taught German by Mścisław Baum, a large, good-looking Jew with the physique of a Viking, and although in the lessons the students constantly did their best to pronounce the words carefully, to speak the German of Goethe, something always pulled them toward Galicia and its singsong, slanting, Polonized and Yiddisher version of the language, in which the words seemed slightly flattened, like old slippers — one could feel safe and at home in it.” Is that not poetry? The choice to pull this particular slice from a book-length work that’s apparently a Thomas Mann-esque horror story is an inspired one – props also to whichever anonymous Fiction-department worker made the cuts. Not only is the storytelling entrancing – probably all the more so because it wasn’t written as a short story, so feels no need to didactically “lead” us anywhere in particular – this could be taught in gender classes as a study of how deeply-embedded misogyny and (sorry for the buzzword) toxic masculinity shape the upbringings and psyches of children, especially sensitive boys. (“Being a man means learning to ignore whatever causes trouble. That’s the whole mystery.”) Yet this is accomplished without a hint of force, and there are plenty of other themes of equal richness swirling around (here’s one: the uncanny nature of consumption and its relationship to care and influence.) So psychologically rich it puts to shame the many stories that press their points. No need, says Tokarczuk – just watch.

🍳 Weekend Essay

“The Missionary in the Kitchen” by Clare Sestanovich. Two Sontags. seeking, seeming, seeing. Beautifully enacts its central theme – a kind of metaphysical dialectics (“Couldn’t it be both?”) – by constantly proposing an idea and then modifying it. This happens in minor moments (sleeping naked “felt strange and unsettling at first, and then it felt like nothing at all”), and major ones (the opening dichotomy: “I was practically Christian” / “I wasn’t religious”). The philosophical is always grounded in the present moment and in description, which doesn’t mean it’s subsidiary to the narrative – it’s at the tale’s center, but it doesn’t push to be heard. Sestanovich achieves remarkable thematic unity – two boys, two feelings, everything and nothing, “Can we be sure of ourselves?” – with ease and grace. Because she doesn’t force a landing spot – perhaps she still doesn’t know exactly where she lands – the tale feels almost weightless. But so does thought.

🍳 Random Pick

(When there’s no subscriber pick in the pipeline, I’m going to use random numbers to roll up a piece from the magazine’s past.)

“Sameer and the Samosas” by Daniyal Mueenuddin. (December 3, 2012). Two Herseys. progeny, generosity, gentry. Mueenuddin’s sharp fiction tends to concern the vicious rich and the striving poor in Pakistan. His prose is cigar-scented and Chekhovian, his narratives enigmatic. All of that is here, but this tale reads quite differently since it’s framed as a Personal History – not even autofiction, just essay. The speaker – Mueenuddin himself – comes across quite terribly, as a highly suspicious nepotistic landowner who sees himself as the victim in every situation. The writing is wonderful (“My God, how penny-bright and clueless I was”) but readers who anticipate extending empathy toward the writer will come away with a pit in their stomach. I didn’t mind that – I rather like an unsympathetic and brutally honest speaker, and the narrative is unlike most of what’s in the magazine these days, although it’s from only a few years back. Mueenuddin has hardly written anything since his first book was a Pulitzer finalist fourteen years ago; he spent a while working on a novel that “proved intractable” and has only recently returned to his old themes – a novella that concerns many of the same incidents covered in this piece was published online a few years ago. Here’s to more.

“Your Pick” is a piece chosen by a randomly selected paying subscriber. Have a piece you want to be "Your Pick"? If you're a paying subscriber, you can also skip the vicissitudes of fate and force your way to the front of the line! Venmo $20 per request to @SamECircle, then write me an email or a note on Venmo letting me know you've done so and what your requested piece is. No limit on the number of requests, BTW. If you want to give me a more open-ended prompt ("1987 reported feature by a woman") that's great as well – and pieces from other venues are okay too, if you ask nicely.

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